SHORT COMMUNICATIONS Performance of Rabbit Hair Blended …nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/32986/1/IJFTR 9(2) 77-79.pdf · Indian Journal of Textile Research Vol. 9, June

Indian Journal of Textile Research

Vol. 9, June 1984, pp. 77-79

SHORT COMMUNICATIONS

Performance of Rabbit Hair BlendedSpeciality Fibre Yarns

PC PATNI, N P GUPTA, R K ARORA & U S SINGH

Wool Science Division, Central Sheep & Wool Research Institute,Avikana gar 304 50I

Received 7 November 1983; accepted 9 Apri/1984

The fibre properties of rabbit hair, being produced under Indianagro-climatic conditions, are compared with those of Mohair,Cashmere and wool. The performance of rabbit hair and its blendswith Hybrid-4 cotton and Avivastra wool on cotton system ofprocessing has also been assessed. It is observed that processing ofrabbit hair and its blends on cotton set of machinery is possible withthe aid of some suitable antistatic agent. Rabbit hair-cotton blendsshow high breaking stress, which may be attributed to the closerfineness and length of these fibres.

Rabbit hair belongs to the class of fur fibres among thespeciality fibres. The leading fibre producingcountries, France, Czechoslovakia and Japan,produce about 2,500 tonnes of rabbit hair per year1.India has also taken up the production of these fibresand the rearing of Angora rabbits is being done atCSWRI sub-station at Garsa in Himachal Pradesh.Like other speciality fibres, rabbit hair also posesdifficulty in processing due to its typical surface

structure 2 • It is believed that while in use, a part of thisfibre drops away from the product. Because of theseproblems and its rarity, rabbit hair is utilized mainly inblends with other fibres. In the present work, thephysical and mechanical properties of rabbit hair,being produced under Indian agro-climatic con­ditions, have been compared with those of Mohair,Cashmere and wool fibres. The performance of rabbithair in blend with cotton and wool on cotton system ofprocessing has also been assessed ..

Rabbit hair, Mohair, Cashmere and Rambouilletsheep wool samples were obtained from CSWRI sub­station at Garsa, Mahatma Phule Krishi University,Rahuri, IVRI sub-station at Mukteswar and CSWRI,Avikanagar respectively. Considering the length andfineness of rabbit hair, Coimbatore Hybrid-4 cottonand Avivastra crossbred wool were chosen forblending and processing.

Fibre fineness and fibre length were measured as perthe Indian Standard Specifications3.4 and fibre tex wasmeasured with the help of Vibroscope. The tensilestrength of the fibre in dry and wet conditions wasmeasured on Instron, keeping the cross-head speedand chart-to-cross-head ratio as 0.5 cm/min and 1:10respectively. Prior to the wet test, the fibres were keptimmersed in water for 24 hr. The guard and undercoat

Table I-Physical and Mechanical Properties of Experimental Fibres

Fibre FibreLinearFibre Dry Wetdiameter

densitylengthJL

texmmBreakingExtensionTenacityBreakingExtensionTenacityload

%g/te)(load%g/texg

g

Rabbit fine hair

10.40.1632.32.034.512.5\.465.08.7

(47.1)*

(25.3)Guard hair

44.00.9243.810.734.211.27.254.07.8

(42.6)

(25.7)Cashmere fine hair

10.90.2630.53.232.512.32.759.610.4

(31.1)

(30.5)Guard hair

48.4\.6750.719.434.0I\.613.658.08.1

(32.5)

(46.5)Mohair

30.41.3513.519.539.514.416.187.811.9

(27.3)

(\9.1)Rambouillet wool

16.80.5025.06.035.012.03.268.06.4

(20.7)

(25.3)Avivastra wool

21.50.8745.19.029.710.35.254.0. 6.0

(24.0)

(50.7)Cotton (Coimbatore Hybrid-4)

12.00.1728.05.05.229.06.66.337.0

*Figures in parentheses show CV%

77

INDIAN J. TEXT. RES., VOL. 9, JUNE 1984

~ 24....~

Vl 20wwa:l-V> 16'"z~ )2.1

I ~Rw

ex:'m 8

4

10 20 30 40BREAKING STRAIN:I.

Fig. 2-Stress-strain curves for cotton (C), rabbit hair (R) andAvivastra wool (A)

C

28

Table 2-Breaking Load, Elongation and Tenacity ofExperimental Yarns

between the tenacity values of the remaining threefibres. The shoulder of curve for Mohair fibre is much

more angular than those of other curves6. Fig.2 showsthat breaking stress is highest for cotton, lowest forwool and that for rabbit hair lies in between. Thebreaking elongation of wool and rabbit hair is almostthe same (30-35%), whereas cotton fibre has a very lowvalue (5.2%).

The values of yarn breaking load, elongation andtenacity (Table 2) reveal that a yarn with fairly hightenacity could be prepared from pure rabbit hair. Thisshows that rabbit hair has a good potential forspinning on cotton system, provided a proper

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fine fibres of rabbit hair and Cashmere were segregatedby visJal inspection for testing.

The spinning of rabbit hair and its blends with wooland cotton, each in proportions of 25,50 and 75%, wascarried. out on Shirley miniature spinningmachinery. Before carding, the blends were openedthoroughly and mixed manually. The difficultyexperienced in winding the material on the drum wasreduced by spraying about 0.1% emulsion of Nip cotex­F (an antistatic agent) with water over the material andagain mixing the material thoroughly. A yarn of about64 Nmwith 110TM was spun from each lot. The yarnstrength was tested on Uster single yarn strength testerkeeping the breaking time within 20 ± 5 sec. All thefibre alnd yarn testings were done under standardconditions of temperature (27 ±2°C) and relativehumidity (65 ± 5%).

The physical and mechanical properties of theexperimental fibres are given in Table 1. It is observedthat the fibre diameter of fine rabbit hair is comparableto those of Cashmere fine hair and cotton fibre.

Mohair is coarser and woollies in between. The shapeand sizeof medulla in rabbit hair is quite different fromthat found in general wools. In this case, ladder-typemedulla appears as a series of evenly spaced darkpatches. These patches may be arranged in a singlelongitudinal series (uniserial) or they may bemultiserial5• The fibre length of Mohair makes itsuitable for processing on worsted set of machinery,while the rest of the fibres can be processed only oncotton set of machinery due to shorter fibre length.

The dry and wet tenacity values of wool and rabbithair are nearer but much less than those of cotton fibre(Table b. The stress-strain curves for the four different

fibres ip dry state (Fig.!) indicate that Mohair is thestrongest fibre and there is not much difference

Fig. I-Stress-strain curves for speciality fibres and Merino wool

16

~ 12....en

v>~10IIIwa::;;8'"z~ 6wa:'m

4

R-RABBIT HAIR C-CASHMERE

M- MOHAIR W-MERINO WOOL

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

BREAKING STRAIN;/.

Blend proportion Breaking loadElongationTenacity%

g%g/tex )-, ,.Rabbit hair: cotton 100:0

80.012.85.4(12.8)*

(31.0)75:25

108.04.56.2(15.6)

(13.0)50:50

306.04.48.0(6.6)

(16.0)25:75

251.46.811.0(7.7)

(10.0)0:100

269.416.213.0

Rabbit hair: wool

(7.2)(10.0)

75:25

157.612.25.2(9.8)

(33.0)50:50

110.47.74.7 r(23.1)(32.0)

25:75101.06.53.6

(21.6)(30.0)

*Figures in parentheses show CV%.

78

SHORT COMMUNICATIONS

Fig. 3-Effect of wool proportion on blended yarn tenacity

The values of actual breaking stress for differentblended yarns are presented in Figs 3 and 4. It isobserved that increase in wool proportion lowers theyarn tenacity, whereas increase in cotton proportionincreases the yarn tenacity. With a finer fibre likecotton, the yarn contains a larger number of fibres inits cross-section for a given yarn number, whichimplies more contact between the constituent fibresand less fibre slippage when a load is applied8• The CVvalues of breaking load and elongation also indicatethe superiority of the cotton blends over wool blends.The breaking elongation values of wool blended yarnsare higher than those of cotton blended yarns.

AcknowledgementThe authors are grateful to Dr R Nagarcenkar,

Director, CSWRI, Avikanagar for encouragementand permission to publish this paper. They are alsothankful to Shri J P Mathur for help in fibre and yarntesting.

References

lIng P Artzt, Ing B Koche Ndorfer, Proceedings, 6th Int Wool TextRes Conf, Pretoria (Interscience Publishers, New York)1980, 577.

2 Patni P C, Arora R K, Gupta N P & Pokharna A K, Indian Text J,87 (1977) 179.

3 Indian Standard Specification IS: 744 (Indian StandardsInstitution, New Delhi) 1966.

4 Indian Standard Specification IS: 1377 (Indian StandardsInstitution, New Delhi) 197L

5 Bergen W V, Wool handbook, VoU (Interscience Publishers, NewYork) 1963,438.

6 Kando T, Tagawa T & Hario M, Proceedings, 4th Int Wool TexrRes Conf. Part II (Interscience Publishe~~,.New York) 1971,879.

7 Hamburger W J, J Text Inst, 40 (1949) 700.8 Patni P C, Bapna D L, Pokharna A K, Mathur J P, Singh V P,

Arora R K & Malhi R S, Indian J Text Res, 4 (1979) 145.

100

o

o

4

)(QJ-

12

01 I I I25 50 75

Wool Proporti on, 0/0

B

14

xv~60\ .,">.!:: "u«z 2wI-

Fig. 4- Effect of cotton proportion on blended yarn tenacity

antistatic agent is applied. The. processing of all-woolfibre had to be abandoned at the drawing stage.Perhaps the high fibre length dispersion did not permitthe material to be drafted evenly.

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